📌 1-Minute Recap
What happens when an engineer accidentally runs terraform destroy -auto-approve at 2AM?
✅ Live Azure infrastructure was destroyed in seconds
✅ No confirmation, no rollback — everything was gone
✅ A full production teardown with zero guardrails
⚠️ Root cause: no approval checks, no environment safeguards, late-night troubleshooting
📥 Full source code + recovery demo inside
👀 Who This Is For
You use Terraform to manage real infrastructure
You want to protect production from human error
You’re into real-world DevOps chaos simulations and learning from failure
🛠️ The Setup: 2AM Debug, Instant Regret
Here’s what triggered the meltdown:
terraform destroy -auto-approve
Terraform instantly began deleting:
📁 terraform-destroy-sim/
├── resource_group.tf – deleted
├── app_service.tf – deleted
├── outputs.tf – gone
├── README.md – now a postmortem
The engineer meant to destroy a test environment, but was in the wrong workspace.
Result? Production was wiped.
🔍 What Went Wrong
❌ No confirmation prompt (because -auto-approve)
❌ No environment separation (prod vs. test)
❌ No automated approval flow
❌ No backup or recovery plan ready
❌ No one awake to catch it in time
🧯 Recovery took hours. Confidence took days.
🧠 What To Do Instead
✅ Use Terraform workspaces or separate state backends
✅ Add approval workflows (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, etc.)
✅ Disable -auto-approve in production scripts
✅ Monitor CLI usage with audit logs
✅ Always double-check the workspace before apply/destroy
🔐 Bottom line: one command can destroy your business-critical systems.
📥 Get the Code + Prompt
Want to try the simulation in a safe sandbox?
👉 Subscribe to the [ newsletter ] and I’ll send you:
The exact Terraform code
The live destroy + recovery demo
A bonus job opening
Break it. Learn it. Recover it.
🎯 Why This Matters
This isn’t theory — this is experience.
In interviews or retros, you can now say:
“I ran a full Terraform destroy simulation and recovered the infrastructure using modules and IaC best practices.”
This shows maturity in DevOps thinking — and it sticks.
📣 Want Your Tool Featured?
If you’re building something that helps teams:
✅ Prevent destructive commands
✅ Manage environments safely
✅ Review Terraform changes before they hit prod
📬 Let’s talk — this series reaches hands-on DevOps engineers and decision-makers.
🔁 Help Me Reach More DevOps Engineers
If this helped you:
✅ Share it with your team
✅ Tag @learnwithdevopsengineer
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Let’s build a DevOps culture that’s battle-tested, not broken.
🎥 YouTube: @learnwithdevopsengineer
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